Felix Pfäffli We see the middle-aged man crouching in pain, alone. His clothes are torn, and one eye is swelling shut, but his fists are clenched. He is a hero. He is the Batman, as drawn by Frank Miller, and he is on the T-shirt that Frank Miller is wearing. Miller smiles. He's sitting in…

The journalist did that by using a variety of online tools — Google Earth, FlashEarth and Panoramio — to pinpoint landmarks in the photographs that could be used to identify the location where militants practiced martial arts, marched with guns or posed for the end-of-camp group picture seen above.

Now that you've signed up for email or text message updates about the Health Insurance Marketplace, you're one step closer to getting the health coverage you need. We'll send you tips and alerts that will help you stay on track to get health insurance that fits your budget and meets your needs.

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Researchers have developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a flat, clear surface.

Brené Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.

In internet startup terms eBay is practically historic. Founded in 1995, it is
one of the few success stories from the original dot-com boom. Matthew
Sparkes takes a look at the company's history as it celebrates its 15th
birthday in the UK

The slow divorce between advertising and editorial is likely to pick up tempo soon. As Dick Tofel of ProPublica often points out, newspaper revenue has been shrinking since 2006, but the American economy has been growing since 2009. Between 1970 and now, the US has averaged only six years between recessions; the current period of growth crossed the six year mark this spring. We are statistically much closer to the next recession than to the last one, and in a recession, ad dollars are the first to go. Many papers will go bankrupt the way Hemingway’s Mike Campbell did: Gradually, and then suddenly.

Asai hasn’t revealed the technical details of the project, but as SlashGear points out, it seems to use an initial face-mapping technology to latch on during real-time movements and accurately project various designs onto the face. This isn’t Asai’s first go at CGI, but it is one of the first times the producer has done CGI work on non-stationary objects.

By subtle measures, however, the video also shows how far things still have to go. One thing that’s even more important than the latitude to ditch a tie is the latitude to chose the best tool for the job. Fixing government procurement so developers aren’t locked into a rigid list of predefined tools will take more work. In the video, Dickerson opens up his government-issued Blackberry smartphone and discovers his password doesn’t meet government muster. “The password you have typed is too short,” he reads from a screen.

“What we wanted to do was start by showing the end product of what you can create and then get kids interested. Then we show them, this is how you build it. We have lessons that break down steps you need to learn in order to build such a game. We enable kids to publish on the App Store, so we have some things that are not supported by a lot of these ‘learn to code’ platforms,” Chen says.

As it turns out, the twin who had the mutation slept, on average, two hours less per night than his brother. When Pack looked at how the pair had fared on the P.V.T.—the measure of sleep deprivation used in his earlier study—he found that the twin carrying the mutation significantly outperformed his brother. When the twins were allowed to catch up on the sleep that they had lost in the study, the carrier twin needed far less time to recover—almost a hundred minutes less. Here, then, was a genetic variant that appeared to allow its carriers to derive the same benefit from six hours of sleep as the vast majority of us gets from eight. Pack and his colleagues published the results last month.

If the app is so abysmally terrible, why bring it to your attention? Simple: Jokes are becoming ‘things’ in the current bubble, and so I would be remiss to not bring you something so foolish and lame that it could just be the next Flappy Bird. Or TimberMan, whatever.

It's actually par for the course for patients to be conscious during brain surgery so that doctors can monitor their condition, but Frisch's case required something new: for him to be playing the violin. The surgical team fitted bow with a three-axis accelerometer, which allowed the team to monitor Frisch's movements in real-time. When they inserted the electrodes into his brain, they were able to gauge whether or not the stimulation was affecting the tremors.

The biocompatible implants behave mechanically like real bone. The true revolution here is the ability to create pieces to match an individual patient's specific anatomy in a way that reduces the overall cost of the complex procedures required to surgically reconstruct a face after injury. The implants can be created very quickly, allowing a patient to get into surgery sooner rather than later.

As a teenager, Sancoff had spent several years helping a friend’s father fashion components for hydroplanes, a type of high-speed racing boat that skims across the surface of the water. Building off that knowledge, Sancoff began reading up on marine technology. To make a stable vessel that doesn’t shoot into the air, as surface-skimming hydroplanes are wont to do, the hull needed to be anchored to the water. But how can one move something through the water without creating debilitating drag? The answer: Supercavitation. Among other benefits, the phenomenon makes craft more fuel-efficient and more stable for shooting at targets. The Russian military, Sancoff learned, had built a supercavitating rocket-powered torpedo, which traveled at 200 knots, roughly four times as fast as American weapons. But the torpedo was difficult to steer. The problem, he realized, was that the propellers were pushing from the back, rather than pulling from the front. “If you push a pencil across a table, it’s very hard to keep it going straight,” Sancoff explains. “If you pull the pencil, it’s easy.”

Banking is now in the eye of the beholder. That’s literally for EyeVerify . This new kind of ID verification tech lets you simply hold your smartphone about 8 inches from your face and take a picture of your eyeball. EyeVerify then pattern-matches the blood vessels within the sclera, the white part of your eye, to unlock your bank account. This eliminates any possibility of a hacker getting into your account and using your PIN or password to steal from you.

If you’re a millennial like me, you remember the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark? , in which kids sit around a campfire (or flickering stage lights or whatever), taking turns giving each other anxiety disorders with scary stories. The title is a bit of a silly question, though. Everyone is to some degree afraid of the dark, because we’re evolutionarily programmed to be. During our tribal days, in the blackness—where our dull senses were essentially useless—we were easy prey for hunters of the night. Safety was with our people in a fire-lit camp.

Now by this point, Homer had many unbelievable achievements under his belt. Three seasons earlier, he went to space. But it's not how absurd the moment is that qualifies it for jumping the shark. It's what impact the moment has on the show's character, and through that character, the world.

The disclosure that taxpayers' money was used to cover the companies' compliance costs raises new questions over the relationship between Silicon Valley and the NSA. Since the existence of the program was first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post on June 6, the companies have repeatedly denied all knowledge of it and insisted they only hand over user data in response to specific legal requests from the authorities.

is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 34 million unique visitors worldwide and 15 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

Map of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter coverage areas before and after the merger. Under the proposed deal, 3 million Time Warner subscribers would go to Charter, 1.6 million Charter customers would go to Time Warner, and 2.5 million customers would go to a new company, referred to as SpinCo in filings, which would be owned 67 percent by Comcast shareholders and 33 percent by a Charter-owned holding company. In the end, a combined Comcast-Time Warner would have 30 million subscribers, while Charter would be the next-largest cable company with 8.2 million subscribers, including the ones it will manage through SpinCo. Data on the divested subscribers is sourced from public filings. Coverage areas are based on broadband coverage areas from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, cross-referenced with public filings, and are accurate to the nearest zip code. Comcast has not released the exact breakdown of subscribers included in the divestiture transaction. As a result, dots indicate which designated market area subscribers belong to, but do not indicate the number of subscribers included in the transaction.

As with all high level tasks, your brain generalizes simple, component parts (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on more complex tasks (like combining sentences into complex ideas). “We don’t catch every detail, we’re not like computers or NSA databases,” said Stafford. “Rather, we take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning.” When we’re reading other peoples’ work, this helps us arrive at meaning faster by using less brain power. When we’re proof reading our own work, we know the meaning we want to convey. Because we expect that meaning to be there, it’s easier for us to miss when parts (or all) of it are absent. The reason we don’t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads.

B ack in the States, if all goes as planned, Bryant will, a little more than two months from now, jog down a tunnel in Staples Center, acknowledge a cheering crowd and play in his first NBA game since fracturing his left kneecap last Decem­ber. It will mark his 19th season in the league, a career during which time he has won five titles and one MVP award, and logged more minutes than all but 12 men in NBA history. Barring any transactional miracles, his most-talented teammates this season will be Carlos Boozer, Jeremy Lin and Julius Randle. Naturally, Bryant is certain that this makeshift crew is capable of greatness. “I hear people say, ‘They don’t have a championship team,’ ” Bryant said a week earlier, while peering out an eighth-floor window at the Beverly Hills Hilton. “Yeah, maybe from your perspective”—and here Bryant pauses, narrows his eyes—“but Boozer does this, Jordan Hill does that, Lin adds that. What’s the best way to put all these pieces together and use them to win? That’s the puzzle to figure out, and if we can figure out that puzzle, we’ll shock a lot of people.” Bryant was at the Hilton on this afternoon to promote an upcoming Showtime documentary, for which he is an executive producer.

Silvia Ferreira is the maker behind the wings. She specializes in items like steampunk-style leather harnesses, utility belts, and cuffs. She made an incredibly detailed armored harness with wings for her guinea pig Pulguinha. It features brass rivet and gear details and what appears to be a repurposed fan component from a computer on the top. The fan probably helps provide more lift, seeing as guinea pigs aren't typically known for their flying abilities.

But let’s return to the ATM. Imagine that it could learn to walk around a festival or event and focus on people who looked as though they were interested in making a purchase. Technological advances of the last few years have made it economically feasible to explore ideas like this. Because of the boom in smartphone production, a small camera can cost as little as $20, making it easier and cheaper for machines to read visual data from the world around them. Other components—such as processors and sensors—have also become exponentially cheaper in the last few years (again, largely thanks to smartphone production). There are still large and exciting challenges to overcome (such as creating the software to run such a “smart” ATM), but the technology and the business models already exist.

And here, unlike in the case of superheroes, there is quite a bit of inbreeding. For example, using the calculated coefficients of the ancient Pharaohs as a template, it seems that Ares has an inbreeding coefficient of 37.5%. This is due to the fact that his parents—Zeus and Hera—are siblings, as well as his grandparents with each other. Zeus has an inbreeding coefficient of 25%. I don’t know which Greek god has the highest coefficient, so please feel free to share calculations in the comments.

In trials right now, Behaviosec’s algorithms can detect a false user in between 20 to 60 seconds of them picking up a smartphone, says Costigan. That’s probably too long for professionals who want to protect intellectual property, but recent funding from DARPA could bring that time down. Behaviosec’s latest research takes into account how people hold and move their phone — based on data from a device’s gyroscope and accelerometer — to authenticate users even more quickly.

More food also leads to bigger spiders, and the scientists believe that human activity attracts a smorgasbord of orb weavers’ favorite prey. Although the study wasn’t designed to determine exactly how the spiders were getting bigger, the researchers speculate that things like street lights, garbage, and fragmented clumps of plant life might attract insects. They also believe that the heat island effect might let urban spiders mate earlier in the year, and might even give them time to hatch multiple broods.

Samsung easily sells the most Android devices, making its update speed the most important for the health of the overall OS ecosystem. It's a shame then that the company does very little to speed up the update process. Samsung uses a heavy monolithic skin with none of the update-friendly architecture that is employed by its competitors. TouchWiz extensively modifies the Android framework to make things like split screen apps, pen input, and floating windows possible. It skins every area of the OS and maintains a plethora of apps that duplicate Google functionality while providing seemingly little benefit to the user.

The vision of printing your own food , gifts or shoes at home is at least five to 10 years away, analyst firm Gartner said in a report on 3-D printing released Tuesday, part of its annual tradition of trying to gauge how much of the talk around various technologies is real vs. hype. 3-D printing refers to a way of manufacturing things on the spot, commonly by spurting out layer upon layer of material such as plastic to forge something based on a digital design.

CNet is reporting that at as of 9 am this morning, Walmart will charge $.97 for it’s budget 5c and $79 for it’s sturdier and flashier counterpart 5S. Prices were previously set at $29 and $99, respectively. Experts are reading the price drop as a move to free up shelf space for the iPhone 6, which is rumored to be set for release in early September.

In some ways, this Earth would resemble one of the tidally locked exoplanets commonly found in a red dwarf star’s habitable zone, but a better comparison might be a very early Venus. Due to its rotation, Venus — like our stopped Earth — keeps the same face pointed toward the Sun for months at a time. However, its thick atmosphere circulates quite quickly, which results in the day and the night side having about the same temperature.

Jobs thinks widely, in terms of the entire human experience. I’d be foolish to try to cover all of that in one piece; rather, I’d prefer to explore certain realms that help refine mental taste. Much like how food critics place emphasis on criteria like texture and flavor, there are certain types of media you can consume to develop your taste:

But even if this was cooperation, the kids were nose down in their devices. They weren't physically engaging each other, like they would on the Big Tab. That's why I got a brief demo of the LeapTV, which launches sometime this fall. Think of it as a Wii aimed at the really wee folk—a motion-controlled gaming console that plugs into your TV, with educational games for kids ages 3 to 8. My children weren't able to try it out, because LeapFrog is still working out the bugs, but from what I saw, it could be a very good way of getting them up and moving—and interacting with each other—on a very big screen. (You'll just have to bring your own.)

What’s striking about the Uber backlash is that the company is hardly the first to use dynamic pricing. There have always been crude forms of price differentiation—or, as it is known in economics, price discrimination. If you go to a movie matinee, you pay less than if you go at night, and if you’re willing to wait to buy a new dress (and run the risk that it might sell out), you can often get it at a marked-down price. But dynamic pricing in a more rigorous sense was pioneered in the 1980s by Robert Crandall, CEO of American Airlines, as a way to fight off competition from discount airlines like People Express. American began by slashing prices for tickets bought well in advance, while keeping prices for tickets bought closer to takeoff (when ticket inventory was lower, and demand was less price-sensitive) as high as possible. In the decades since, this kind of yield management has become integral to the business models of airlines, hotels, and rental-car companies, and greater computing power and more sophisticated data analysis has turned pricing in these industries into an incredibly complex process.

Yet knowing Flappy Bird, I understood that Nguyen does have a deep respect for classic video games and the art of challenge and reward, if only in a modernized experience that aims to go beyond the established titles of the time. Picking up Swing Copters for a second take later on in the night, I was able to achieve a score of 3 points by taking deep breaths and thinking in a way that goes beyond puzzle solving or timing: it required a strange, zen-like concentration in which you must not bend the game to your will, but the other way around. Success, whatever that meant any more, felt so sweet.

Welcome to the first annual Verge Hack Week. We're totally blowing up our site: we've given our reporters and editors the entire week to play with new tools and experiment with new storytelling ideas, while members of our amazing product team have gathered in New York to help build all sorts of interesting new things. Learn more.

Weeks after rumors linked Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba to an investments, AppNexus has announced a new late-stage funding round that values the company at $1.2 billion, nearly doubling the valuation of the company from its last fund raise in January of 2013. The funding comes from an unnamed public equity firm in Boston, with an additional $40 million in room allocated for other investors, many of them strategic partners and existing investors, to join in a second close.

TARVER: To me, it’s always more funny if it comes from the world. So that’s an opportunity not a concern. That place has such a unique and ridiculous way of talking—the lingo, the attitude, the fallback terms. All the inside baseball shit. I love it. We all do. And there are so many “jokes” that aren’t jokes at all. I was a big advocate of that opening speech the CEO gives at the party in the opening of the series. The one where he says something like: “I have seven words for you. I love Goolybib’s cross platform integrated functionality.” Or whatever it was. That was a joke that could only appear on our show. I think it really established the right vibe right off the bat.

is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 34 million unique visitors worldwide and 15 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

SHIFT is Gearbox Software's fan reward program. Players can sign up for Gearbox Software's SHiFT Premiere Club directly from within Borderlands 2 (PC/Mac, PS3, or Xbox 360). Membership is free. Once signed up, you can enter SHiFT codes, which will unlock rewards such as skin customizations or other goodies -- including the coveted Golden Keys. Codes have to be redeemed from inside the game, via the Extras menu.

For those of you who find the idea of leaving your favorite television show unthinkably heinous, Pinterest has mapped out a few visitable locations where your favorite Emmy-nominated shows were filmed. So you can pretend you're taking a vacation from pop culture, while actually embedding yourself even deeper.

Last week, 4JStudios announced that it finished Minecraft for the PlayStation 4 and was awaiting Sony's final test before the game's release. Today, 4J Studios told fans that Sony found issues with the PS4 version during the final testing. "We're fixing, but we need to go through the process again," tweeted the developer .

Steven Downie you don’t have any of these systems but you are commenting.. Must be a liberal.. Cause that what they do.. Rant without knowledge.. Kinetic is just a part of what sets X1 above PS4.. One of you sheep said you like PS4 because it is built for what its meant to do??!!! WTF are you serious!!! Is that really your rationing? Let me break it to you X1 does just as good a job for games as PS4 :) so you paid that much money for a simple upgraded PS3.. Congrats.. All you using the word “fanboy” please shut up.. That’s the gayest term on the net and you are abusing it.. Ever article on the net about this issues people use that world to describe someone that doesn’t agree with you.. Are we not aloud to disagree??? You can spill out performance stats all day long about the PS4.. Great Im glad you have your glasses on!! Take a break from bashing and hating and actually look at the stats.. Which system is outselling.. You PS4.. Well PS4 is offered in over 70 countries and X1 less then 20..on Top of that Sony bragged about sales.. Where did MS do that? Oh they didn’t.. So how do you know… What we do know is that X1 software (games) is outselling Weakstation.

Some upgrades are subjective—like moving from pen and paper to a digital note-taker. Other upgrades, however, change the way you use technology, and make it impossible to go back to something inferior. Here are 10 of those things.